In Only Three Months, 2019 Measles Cases Surpassed Last Year’s Total

Measles has been making a pretty solid comeback in the United States for the last years, but this time alarms have gone off: last year’s cases were already surpassed by 2019’s, even though were are barely past the first quarter. In other words, more measles cases have been recorded in the first three months of 2019 than all of 2018 in its entirety, health officials said. And unsurprisingly, the majority of these cases were found on people that were not vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There had been 387 cases of measles this year in 15 states. That number alone already overshadows last year’s total of 372. The 15 states with outbreaks are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. “This is the second-greatest number of cases reported in the U.S. since measles was eliminated in 2000,” the CDC said. The highest post-2000 number was in 2014, with 667 confirmed cases.
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Don’t miss: Measles Are Back And Threatening Humanity Thanks To The Anti-Vaxxer Movement

The CDC said these recent outbreaks have blamed travelers who brought measles to the US from places with large outbreaks of the disease, like Israel and Ukraine. Yet, last year’s three large outbreaks ― in New York state, New York City and New Jersey ― mainly affected unvaccinated members of the Jewish Orthodox community.

The latest outbreak places pressure on the anti-vaxxer movement, which claims there is a link between vaccines and autism. Even though there is no such link and studies have repeatedly disproved this belief, measles cases are on the rise, even though the vaccine is 97-percent effective.
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The anti-vaxxers movement started in 1998, when former physician Andrew Wakefield published a study linking the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine to autism. All subsequent research has found no link between vaccines and autism, but the damage Wakefield did endures, and there is now a strong -and, unfortunately, growing- online community who promote his ideas and actively refuse to get their children vaccinated.

Further reading: 6 Unexpected Things That Happen To Your Body When You Cut Out Sugar

Before the measles vaccination program started in 1963, an estimated of 3 to 4 million people contracted measles each year in the U.S. About 400 to 500 of those died, 48,000 were hospitalized and 1,000 developed the brain inflammation encephalitis, the CDC said.
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